bare feet
          concrete jungle
stepping, stopping,
gone
the smallest of pebbles
neon flickers
                                                        ­      do not call after her
night erases the gaps
streetlights dim
loneliness
            glows
                                              ­                do not call after her
she dances telephone wires
       asphalt horizons
                                                              do­ not call after her
even the sidewalks
are silent

the coast, it is just as you promised.

         elusive--

the white stones shifting beneath my feet,
this wind. this rain,
the way the steely sky
trickles down to kiss the sea,
the indistinct rumors / hints / echoes of mountains
where the mist has slept with the trees.

                       vast, inconsolable:

the cliffs whisper to me
of their endless
journey to the horizon,
and captured in this fragrant
brushstroke of balsam and pine
I feel the damp northwest morning
soak into my skin,
and suddenly there is
an itching of feathers
and salt in my veins.

                                      {evergreen, wild}

                     for a second,
I bite into the marine chaos
of these dancing whitecaps,
and it is just as you promised.

untamable.


      pacific.

I find you between the lines,
when the sky is mercury
and the world slows to a halt.

in these moments
       (listen--the ocean is silent)
we whisper, crashing

in and out of starry tenderness,
hurricane youth. and
I find you between the lines

where our bodies fade into one another,
where hand meets hand meets
earth: there is something about

windy mornings, tacit eternities
and the way your fingers
             find escape in my hair.

--but i have realized
that i live for the ash in your eyes,
the shadows i kiss from your collarbones
the unspoken flames that dance
                                     across your skin

igniting, consuming.
between the swirling dust
and your smoky eyelashes,
i breathe you,
choke on the embers and
love every moment of it.

the voices, they become
white noise. white smoke,
           my wide eyes are
wandering again
in search of you

behind foggy windows and
along the lines where walls meet
ceilings. your shoulders,
they are too silent today--
I lose your blue-rimmed

certainty in the current.
do you hear me calling?
you begin to turn--
          dark hair, sharp edges
but the voices become

miles

           and we are lost.

am I unique? fear not, she says, for
no one breathes pine needles the way you do and
no one bleeds stars the way you do and
no one, no one whispers of scarlet mornings
the way you do.

but what, then, does it mean
to be here? is it your voice
dancing in my dream last night? is it
the way our fingertips speak of
quartz, of ink? is it the icicle
antlers we planted this morning? is
it the soft scratch of birch bark? of
outside? is it the emptiness
that defines us?

all of this and more: I cherish
these sunlit midnights,
the memories of broken
storm.

dream not of winters, gentle storm
       let rosy summer whispers warm
your thunder heart, restitched and torn
       by fleeting waters
                        silence-born.

In the twist of a sweet winter morn I am
buried, yet no more lifeless
than the slumbering roots of this yesterday
forest. Brush the snow off my eyelashes--yes, just so--and find
that I am but an icy glow, transparent beneath
the fairy touch of your marble lips.

wild whisper of August wind
ruffles my hair and scatters my thoughts like
castaway leaves riding a downstream breeze
snagging on branches as they tumble, float away
and I stumble after the flashes of color,
the fragmented memories, wishes, to-do lists
somersaulting alike in the freedom wind
and I let them, let them go
let myself give in to the roaring crash of summer’s eve
a sun not yet ready to set
soon, it will be time to chase
time to gather up the scattered musings
but for now
I carry it within me
this wild, wild whisper of August wind

between the spidery cracks of a broken
mirror I search for pieces of you.

in this dark room of echoes
and paper
            clips, I fear I am lost
despite the timid spindles of light that
     ghost their way
through the gaps. they dance in fractal
cobwebs on the wooden boards, distracting me
from the emptiness I hold--like a dime--between
               my thumb and forefinger.

how still the silent water greets the night
a gentle muffled splashing at its shores
reflects a moon that quietly implores
the lake to join her in her lonely flight.

how smooth the ripples gleaming silver light
a path that ghosts away with splendid dawn
a thousand fireflies dancing upon
the frozen highway shining in the night.

and to the sun that yawns across the east
no silver light falls over misty lakes
no evidence of midnight dreams, at least

              (Only the moon, the moon
                                          remembers all.)